How I got Disc Golf Network Pro for FREE for 2024

Do you plan to go to a DGPT event this year? Are you a PDGA member? Then it could be worth it to buy the Disc Golf Network yearly plan.

Disc Golf Network (aka DGN) (the media arm of the Disc Golf Pro Tour) (aka DGPT), announced their new pricing tiers for 2024 earlier this month. It was met with some mixed reviews. Some users of the service had issues using it the first week. Most of those appear to be due to users needing to update the app on their devices or using older streaming devices that do not support the new 60fps stream. They have updated their upgrade guide. I experienced this on one of my Roku devices. I was not surprised to be honest. Many of the Roku apps we use on that device are laggy and crash from time to time. It is over 10 years old. The fact that it has kept working at all is a credit to Roku.

As for the pricing for DGN, there are three tiers: Basic, Standard, and Pro. See the link above for the differences. The pricing ranges from $5.99/mo to $19.99/mo for non-PDGA members. While PDGA members can get Basic for free, Standard for $5.99/mo, and Pro for $12.99/mo. There are also yearly options. Basic for $59.99, Standard for $129.99, and Pro for $239.99 for non-PDGA members. And for PDGA members, Standard for $69.99 and Pro for $139.99. Since Basic is free, there is no yearly option for PDGA members of course. Most people I know that want to consume live disc professional disc golf are PDGA members. While some say you have to factor in the $50 annual PDGA membership cost along with the discounted DGN price, that does not apply to me. I would be renewing my PDGA membership either way. So, I will only be speaking about how and why I chose the option I did based on the discounted PDGA pricing.

The first question I had to ask is what do I want to pay monthly or go ahead and pay for the whole year? The Standard plan annual cost only saves you $2 for the year. Not a compeling reason to do it in my opinion. The annual cost for Pro actually saves more than the cost of a month, $139.99 one time compared to $12.99/mo over 12 months totaling $155.88. There are some ways to save if you change your plan for certain months for certain events or remember to cancel after the DGPT Finale in October. But, let's be real. I won't remember to do that. Most people won't remember to do that. That is why the subscription model is so popular in the USA. That is how gyms stay in business to be honest. If you are the kind of person that likes to manage subscriptions that way, go for it. If you micro manage it completely and only pay for February through October and upgrade the months of the USDGC and European Open, you could get all of the coverage for as low as $88.89 for the year as a PDGA member. I think I did that math right. You are probably saying "Hey, your headline says you are getting it free for the whole year! What gives?" Yes, let me get to that.

Here is why I opted for the full year, Pro plan. It’s $139.99 for the year. The kicker for me is that any yearly plan includes two free general adminssion (aka GA) weekend passes to a Disc Golf Pro Tour event as well as 10% off any other DGPT ticket purchases. As a family, we had already booked an AirBnB for Nashville in April to go watch the Music City Open before this announcement was made. My two sons and I are going for all three days. And two other family members will be joining us for Sunday. I had planned to get the weekend VIP pass for myself. So, altogether, our tickets to the Music City Open were going to cost around $350. However, with the yearly DGN option, I get the GA passes for free. And I get a 10% discount on the other tickets. Those ended up costing me around $210 after the discount. So, my savings on tickets (tickets I had already planned to buy before I knew there was a discount available) is around $140. That is the cost of the yearly plan. If you include all of the decimals in all of the math, I technically am spending 17 cents more on the DGN subscription than I am saving on tickets. Would that make a better headline?

Having said all that, if you are not really into watching live disc golf and don’t follow the pro scene on social media, the best way to consume the pro tour is next day, post produced coverage on the JomezPro YouTube channel. In the past, their coverage only included the lead group each round. This year, JomezPro are doing more comprehensive coverage of the event as a whole. I am sure this is due in part to having multiple winners last season that were not in the lead group in the final round (aka chase card champions). This meant that the JomezPro coverage didn’t include footage (or not much at least) of the actual winner of the event. They were purchased or merged with Disc Golf Network early last year. However, other media companies covered the second and third groups. This year, they didn’t partner with those media companies in the same way which allows JomezPro to use the footage from all groups. Listening to Jeff Spring on the Staggered Stance podcast, it sounds like they will still be partnering with some of those media companies like Ace Run Pro for some things this year as well.

Update

I forgot to mention that I had a hard time finding information about how to get my free tickets and discounts. After some digging, I found in the DGN support pages. You have to fill out a form which triggers an email which has discount coupon codes and a link to another form you have to fill out to get your free DGPT tickets. So, if you get an annual subscription, be sure and fill out this form to at least get your 20% discount codes for the DGPT Pro Shop and JomezPro Shop. JomezPro has made some cool stamps in the past that I have rarely bought unless they had a sale going. Having a 20% discount code will make me consider them more often when ordering discs online.

This post was not paid for or done as a favor for the DGPT. I am just a disc golf fan that wanted to share my experience.